Here you can read an extensive conversation conducted with Vladimir Arsenijević by Gea Vlahović for Zagreb’s Tportal during the Rijeka leg of his current regional mini-tour.

The Belgrade-based writer, one of the most prominent voices of Serbia’s anti-war and civic scene, presented his latest novel Ghosts (Duhovi) at Rijeka’s Vrisak festival. We talked about the political crisis in Serbia ahead of the elections, the tsunami of historical revisionism, the radicalization of youth, and the unrealistic expectations surrounding a mere change of government.

Remaining strictly within the boundaries of pure literature with Belgrade writer Vladimir Arsenijević is practically impossible. His prose, born out of the anxiety of the nineties, mass emigration, and the tragic loss of an entire urban generation, is inseparable from a vivid and somber political reality.

Over the past three decades, Arsenijević has built a recognizable authorial, editorial, and activist position—authoring a total of twelve books including novels, illustrated novels, documentary-travel prose, short story collections, essays, plays, and screenplays. He launched the cult publishing house Rende, managed the Belgrade branch of V.B.Z., and in 2009 co-founded the KROKODIL Association and Festival, which has grown into one of the region’s most important gathering places for literary dialogue and civic activism.

His daily on-the-ground engagement in Belgrade—an uncompromising fight against hate speech, removing fascist graffiti, and organizing commemorative actions—has made him a direct target of street radicalism. This recently culminated in a physical assault on him in central Belgrade during preparations for the commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide anniversary.

Born in Pula in 1965, Vladimir Arsenijević entered public and cultural life in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of Belgrade’s punk and new wave scene, playing in bands like Urbana gerila and Berliner Strasse. He made his literary debut in 1994 with the anti-war novel In the Hold (U potpalublju), winning the prestigious NIN Award as the youngest recipient in its history and the first author to receive it for a debut novel. The novel was soon translated into more than twenty languages, launching its author among the most translated contemporary regional writers.

The formal occasion for our meeting at the Vrisak literary festival, organized by the V.B.Z. publishing house in Rijeka, was his novel Ghosts (Duhovi, 2023, Laguna)—the fourth and final volume of his extensive, three-decade-spanning tetralogy Cloaca Maxima. However, looking at the Belgrade and regional upheavals from a Rijeka perspective, the conversation inevitably drifts from the book’s covers onto heated political terrain.

The attack beneath the Branko Bridge, 28 misdemeanor charges for painting over hate graffiti, the far-right hijacking civic protests, snap elections, the “Student List,” and the question of whether a change of government alone can bring a deep shift in consciousness… Ahead of the extraordinary parliamentary elections in Serbia on October 25, we spoke with Arsenijević about the paradoxes of modern Belgrade, the systematic continuity of Serbian political autocracy, and how to preserve the integrity of one’s own micro-world.

With the novel Ghosts, you concluded the story that began back in 1994 with your debut novel In the Hold. Has your perspective on how societal ruptures shape individual destinies changed in the meantime?

The tetralogy was conceived while writing the manuscript for the first book, between 1992 and early 1994—right in the middle of the worst horrors of the nineties. I envisioned a story that, in the first three books, covers a very compact chronological period of one year, following the members of a young family burdened by their own and their generation’s demons while growing up in the eighties. Entering the nineties, they face the implosion of everything and a new reality that most closely resembles Armageddon—where it’s impossible to know what lies on the other side.

At the same time, we were living alongside a broader European context that was going through much better days. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Eastern Bloc was opening up, and many expectations were optimistic, except on our local level. That’s why I envisioned the fourth book—what would later become Ghosts—as taking place in the future. I believed that everything would end eventually, however it ended, and that we would become civilized and start living like any normal society. I thought we would end up as some new Switzerland or Sweden. That was supposed to be the narrator’s vantage point: speaking from a normal, decent present, looking back at a horrific past, and reconstructing it.

As time went on, it became clear, especially in Serbia, that the future had not developed anywhere near those expectations. Hence the sense of deep betrayal that the narrator brings to the story thirty years later. Now in his sixties, a time when it certainly makes sense to look back, he is left with the feeling that things have slipped away, that they are not under our control, and that perhaps, objectively, they never were. Belgrade is endlessly scribbled over with messages of hate, chauvinistic and warmongering graffiti, pro-Russian support, and murals of Putin and Ratko Mladić.

Living surrounded by the constant glorification of all that, while knowing that those same societal forces severely disrupted your own life from the start… that is what ultimately remains with him.

Do you feel that Serbia and the countries with which it once shared a political and cultural space no longer inhabit the same timeframe today?

The media coverage certainly creates that impression. But if you were to go to Belgrade or another city in Serbia right now, you would find a fairly normal life, and some aspects are even quite good. These processes are multidirectional and complex. The reality in Serbia is undoubtedly dark when we discuss human rights, democratic governance, and the way Serbia communicates with itself, its neighbors, and the world.

On the other hand, Belgrade has become an incomparably more vibrant city over the last ten or fifteen years. People from all over the world have moved in, the streets are diverse, and the cultural and culinary scenes are very active. One does not exclude the other. However, what Serbia chooses to communicate about itself to the rest of the world truly is a series of disasters. This shows an immature society led by self-serving politicians that, overall, fails to orient itself in time and space. I think that is precisely where the core difference lies today between Serbia and the surrounding countries.

You often point to the paradox of Serbian society, where there is a strong emotional fascination with Russia as a “big brother,” while young people simultaneously emigrate en masse to Western countries seeking European living standards. Do pro-Russian murals and messages reflect a deep-seated societal orientation, or are they a politically manufactured image of reality?

The moment the nineties ended with the fall of Milošević on October 5, a tsunami of revisionism kicked off from all sides of society. Even while Đinđić was alive, we had plenty of reasons to be worried about where we were heading; even he realized he had to resort to political opportunism: we will extradite these war criminals to The Hague, but in return, we must make concessions to the segment of society that holds a different view. Today people look back fondly on that period, but even then, there wasn’t much reason for optimism.

When you lock a society inside a bubble called contemporary Serbia and subject it for 25 years to constructs, lies, and complete fabrications regarding key issues—about what happened in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and about our responsibility for the crimes committed—what can you expect other than a society that has ultimately internalized what you fed it for so long?

It is especially devastating that this applies to young people, who often don’t question these “truths” at all. According to that version of history, we were practically planting strawberries and growing flowers here until the NATO bombing, when suddenly the big, evil NATO appeared out of nowhere and bombed us for no reason. There is almost no understanding, sympathy, or empathy for the evil inflicted on others; there is only massive self-pity.

Srebrenica is perhaps the clearest example. It is one of the most thoroughly investigated and documented mass crimes in history: mass graves, DNA analyses, testimonies, and detailed reconstructions exist. Yet, facts fail to defeat what I would call emotional truths and the “what about what they did to us?” logic. I witnessed this firsthand when we attempted to hold a commemorative gathering for the Srebrenica genocide.

The young men who attacked us came to paint messages like “Ratko Mladić – Serbian Hero” and “Long Live the Army of Republika Srpska,” countering the number of victims in Srebrenica with alleged numbers of Serbian casualties in Bratunac and Podrinje. There is also a recurring phrasing you hear constantly: “It was a terrible crime, but it wasn’t genocide.” Fine, but then you have to ask: where does genocide begin, what is that number? If 8,372 people isn’t genocide, but a larger number is, where is the line? It is a morbid numbers game used to dodge the only question that matters: can we finally reflect seriously on what happened and what was done in our name?

Furthermore, no one accused the entire Serbian people of committing genocide. Specific individuals were charged and convicted for specific crimes. But society began identifying itself with them: transforming the statement that a genocide took place into the claim that someone is “declaring Serbs a genocidal nation,” while turning a convicted war criminal into a hero elevated into a kitsch version of a Serbian paradise. It is the madness of a society that seems intent on harming itself.

That is why the problem goes deeper than whether Vučić or someone else is in power. The foundations upon which Serbian society’s self-awareness and dominant view of history rest have not yet been seriously challenged. Until that happens, it is hard to expect real progress.

The attackers at the commemoration were exceptionally young. How do you explain that hatred and the defense of 1990s war crimes are being so radically embraced today by people who weren’t even born back then?

We shouldn’t forget that a chain of command exists and that they are merely the last link in that chain. I don’t mean to diminish their convictions because those young people truly believe in what they promote, but someone definitely sent them there. We have seen a vertical axis that cuts across Serbian society, directly linking its bottom layers with the highest political ranks. Starting from the bottom, you have teenagers—a hybrid of football hooligans communicating through Telegram channels with tens of thousands of members.

They are exceptionally well-organized and financially backed, possess a strong sense of group belonging, and can assemble by the hundreds in an instant when action is needed. That makes them an impressive asset for anyone requiring such services. Above them, you have various levels of the system—municipal militia, police, inspectors. The problem arises when you reach the first politically relevant tier, the state prosecutor’s office, where many cases simply stall.

About thirty young men participated in the attack on me, and five were in direct physical contact with me. When the case reached the prosecution, two individuals were supposedly identified and given misdemeanor charges. The fine is ten thousand dinars—or five thousand if paid within a certain deadline—roughly 40 euros. And why two? Because if there had been three, it would automatically constitute a criminal offense rather than a misdemeanor. On the other hand, we received 28 misdemeanor charges for removing hate graffiti; one explicitly stated that by “applying white paint to a white wall, we ruined the exterior appearance of the building.” That is Kafka in a very concrete form.

Young people see clearly that there are virtually no consequences for their violence. In this specific instance, we are dealing with an informal ultra-right group called Klub 451. The name references Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s novel about a book-burning society, which is quite twisted in itself—either they didn’t read Bradbury carefully or I have no idea why they chose that number. This youngest far-right iteration inherits the traditions of Western and Central European extreme right movements. They are more neo-Nazi than neo-Chetnik, although anything promoting neo-Chetnik ideology suits them just as well.

There is no doubt they were there with a purpose—they didn’t show up by accident. They knew who I was, possessed all the information, and based on everything we know, they receive specific orders and financial backing. At the same time, it is convenient for them to do it because it aligns perfectly with their beliefs. Nobody hired them to paint a positive Pride mural—that would probably trigger a moral crisis for them.

Given all the charges, fines, and attacks you’ve faced, do you ever get tired of “civil disobedience”?

No, really, I don’t. I view it as a form of personal hygiene. In the long run, brushing your teeth or applying face cream is irrational because we all know what awaits us at the end, yet we do it anyway. We have an obligation to ourselves to remain presentable. I view urban environments the exact same way. I try, to the extent of my capabilities, to keep that small piece of space somewhat decent. I realize one has to draw an artificial line: beyond this point is no longer my domain. But there’s no alternative. That is the maximum I can do.

We tried hard to assemble activists, but it’s quite difficult. We can belittle and criticize the right wing, but it’s evident that they work very diligently on their side and, I fear, are far more successful among young people at creating narratives that are “sticky” and easily adopted. They have learned the power embedded in modern communication tools and are adept at flipping paradigms. So the rest of us have our work cut out for us.

Meanwhile, the political mainstream has largely staked its political future on the famous Expo 2027. Now elections have been called for October 25; someone will win, but whoever wins, the Expo will take place. And if you truly want to bring foreign guests to such a city, perhaps you should clean it up first. Then again, maybe what we see now is more honest because, objectively, this is who we are.

The Student Movement is entering the elections with its own civic list; what reach and challenges do you foresee in students stepping directly into the electoral race?

I had the opportunity to evolve alongside the Student Movement from a position that was initially very acceptable to me, to something that is much harder for me to accept today. Now I would have to vote the way they say the French do—holding my nose. Right now, no option in Serbia is my natural choice. We watched that movement shift from something that iconographically belonged to a general 21st-century European modernity toward a resurgence of nationalist symbols. A fascination with Russia, Wagner flags, strong anti-NATO sentiments, and self-victimization began to emerge.

Students gather in front of the bombed General Staff building to protest the NATO bombing, even though they weren’t even born at the time, yet they show no equal need to confront the atrocities committed by Serbian forces across the region. Then there is the recruitment of war veterans to protect student protests. To me, our war heroes are the people from the 1990s anti-war civil society—the anti-war and women’s movements, feminists, and lesbians who fought against the war, protested in the streets, and suffered violence from the majority as a result. Those are the people who have remained almost unrecorded and forgotten.

And these older guys with beer bellies who, 35 years later, can do nothing better than slap that stupid beret on their heads and turn it into their whole identity—based on everything we know about the actions of the Serbian army in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, their rightful place would likely be in The Hague as well. And now we are watching a synergy between our supposedly bright, beautiful young people and those scoundrels.

That is where my red lines lie. When we brought the Ukrainian flag or the European Union flag to protests—because if the movement claims not to be right-wing, but inclusive, then surely there should be room for us too, not just for Chetniks—we were subjected to physical violence. Our flags were torn up, and absolutely no one came to our defense. That was on March 15 of last year, and that was the last time I attended those protests.

Since then, things have continued in that direction. Suddenly, the primary focus was no longer the people who died under the canopy in Novi Sad; by some magic, it became Kosovo. Everywhere you look, there are “We Won’t Give Up Kosovo” messages, flags, and maps of Serbia featuring Kosovo as its province.

Because of all this, I find the student list itself problematic. It includes some rather extreme right-wing individuals, and the student movement is backed by the People’s Patrols and all those groups we’ve discussed. You also have Feđa Dimović from Beogradski Sindikat, which to me is “nazi hip-hop.” I realize why my stance might be flawed on a realpolitik level, but I don’t live in that world and I don’t have to participate in it. For me, that space has become polluted and toxic, and I simply no longer find my place within it.

I am also baffled by the blind acceptance of the narrative about wonderful, brilliant young people for whom we should all step aside, because we were supposedly stupid and now they are coming to show us how it’s done. There is a kind of generational masochism in that. Ultimately, today you have the SNS and Vučić, you have this kind of Student Movement with its concept of plenums and phantom decision-making bodies whose composition, timing, and methods remain unknown, and then you have the so-called pro-European opposition, which is again a conglomerate of various political parties and more or less likable individuals. So there you go, that’s the offer.

Still, I don’t think abstaining from voting is wise. One should make a calculation and decide what is most sensible at that moment. But going to the polls with great enthusiasm or overblown expectations about what will follow is not smart, in my view.

How much does the entry of radical right-wingers disguised as anti-Vučić options complicate the core objectives of the student protests in their fight against the regime?

If we knew exactly what the core objectives were, perhaps we could determine that, but they were never entirely clear. They were clear only for a brief moment when the movement claimed to be apolitical: we are merely demanding accountability. But that wasn’t realistic. Demanding accountability for the deaths under the canopy in Novi Sad necessarily leads to high-ranking political figures, bringing up the entirely political question of their continuation in power.

They knew this too, which is precisely why the whole situation was played out so successfully that today hardly anyone remembers that people were supposed to answer for those deaths first and foremost. But it couldn’t stop there: once you raise the question of accountability, a domino effect begins that, based on everything we knew, would have to end with the fall of the government. Everything after that is the interplay of various forces within Serbian society, one of which is a powerful right wing.

That is why the protests very quickly assumed ethno-nationalist characteristics. Very little time passed between November, when the canopy collapsed, and February, yet we were already seeing Kosovo references, people in traditional šajkača caps, and a man impersonating Jesus carrying a ten-meter wooden cross. Are you serious? What is this? And the problem isn’t just that such people are there, but that thousands of others walk peacefully beside them, completely unbothered. That shocked me deeply.

Then there are the thousands of Serbian flags. I mean, waving the Serbian flag to that extent inside Serbia is truly bizarre. It’s as if there’s a need for double or triple validation of one’s own identity. All of this entered the protest crowds and was accepted almost without resistance. On the margins, it provoked outrage among people who couldn’t see themselves aligned with such ideas. Paradoxically, our disgust with it all created even more space for the right wing to take over those positions—and they seized it.

On the other hand, you have the operations of the Russian security services. Suddenly, flags measuring six by ten meters appear in these kids’ hands, featuring that curly-haired Jesus under whose banner Russian troops committed atrocities in Ukraine and devastated an entire country. Alongside them, naturally, are flags calling for a imagined return of Kosovo under Serbian rule. If you carry that idea to its logical conclusion, it implies a bloody war involving NATO forces, given their presence there.

Even if those pipe dreams were to come true through some bizarre miracle, the people promoting them cannot answer a very simple question: what would we as a society do with two million Kosovo Albanians? That is a highly cohesive electorate that could easily outvote individual Serbian political options and gain immense power within our institutions—which might carry a certain poetic justice. Naturally, none of those advocating such a scenario actually want that to happen.

The Student Movement absorbed all of this under a convenient catch-all slogan. Then we are usually told: don’t worry, this is just a tactic toward the right; once we free ourselves from these villains, they will handle it. And I ask: who among them will handle it? Who will resolve it if they themselves believe in that exact version of reality and no other? To me, all of it is deeply unconvincing.

Yet many advocate precisely that: broad opposition alliances with the shared goal of toppling the regime. Can an autocratic system be dismantled in an alliance with options that share the same ideological foundations as the regime being overthrown?

We have already seen once very clearly—and it still hurts us to this day—that it is impossible. That was October 5, 2000, which subsequently turned into a symbolic October 6 that never actually happened. Yet that is precisely what we worked for throughout the nineties, from the earliest roots of civil society: lighting candles, protesting the shelling of Dubrovnik, displaying black ribbons for Sarajevo. In the end, Milošević fell, and almost instantly we witnessed all these turncoats; people from the old system suddenly promoted themselves as heroes of a new era.

Figures like Legia appeared—later convicted for the assassination of Zoran Đinđić—alongside members of paramilitary units that had committed state-sponsored atrocities, now pathetically kneeling before the Patriarch who bestows his blessing upon them. You watched all of this unfold in real time. That is why people say October 6 never arrived. Our chance to transform into a semi-normal society was literally nipped in the bud. So I wonder what people are basing their hope on today. How do you manage to keep hoping that this time will be any different? To me, that is wishful thinking, not a rational assessment.

It seems to many today that our reality broke down the moment Aleksandar Vučić came to power. But that continuity, realistically speaking, can be traced throughout modern Serbian history, all the way back to the beginnings of the modern Serbian state in the first half of the 19th century—the gradual exit from the Ottoman Empire, autonomy, the Principality, and then the Kingdom of Serbia: autocracy, arbitrariness, brutality, the abuse of societal resources for personal ambition, the neglect of society’s needs, and so forth.

For us, there is no real progress until we turn back, one last time and truly seriously, to everything that happened in the nineties and confront it. Without that, this society has no way to prosper and move forward. And so far, no one wants to do that.

What do you expect will happen on October 25?

I don’t know, but I am certain that violence will happen on October 26, because I don’t see how things could unfold otherwise. Either Vučić has fallen or he hasn’t—in both cases, I think violence follows. Irregularities are already being uncovered; people are signing up en masse as election monitors and checking voter registries wherever they can. If the government declares victory, I am convinced the other side will contest it, street protests will follow, and then I can assume police violence will too.

On the other hand, what if Vučić loses? I don’t know what his plan is for that scenario. Maybe he gets on a plane and flies to Moscow or Beijing, but I’m not sure. In any case, the SNS remains on the ground—the largest political party that has ever existed in Serbia, larger even than the SPS in its glory days. It is a massive interest network where many people chose to surrender their dignity, and ultimately their sense of personal autonomy, for minor or major favors. That level of servility, cult of personality, and subservient public attitude toward Aleksandar Vučić is something history should truly record.

So, even if he leaves somewhere, many people will remain who will be blamed by others—because they are responsible for what they did. That is why I cannot imagine us avoiding a shorter or longer period of societal violence. Serbia is leading itself toward it. After all the victims of that inherent aggressiveness, Serbia itself might ultimately fall victim to the dynamics it so carefully cultivates. I am the last person to wish for anything violent, but perhaps that too is part of the path toward some form of awakening.

Is a change of government alone enough for real change?

I don’t believe so. Whoever sits in that chair quickly realizes where the money comes from. You can talk irresponsibly while you’re out of power, but when you have to execute concrete projects, it becomes clear that there is one fairly reliable source of money, while others are less reliable or come at a higher cost. And that source is the European Union. Whoever comes to power will face the same problems as soon as they enter the realm of realpolitik: how to achieve what they intend. And we actually don’t even know what the Student List’s intentions are.

When you ask them if there is a plan for the first days after a change of power—what to do with national television, which institutions to reform first—you realize no such plan exists. As for Vučić, on the other hand, I have no doubt he has a plan. But whoever succeeds him, Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko will still be there, along with Russian influence, Chinese economic and geopolitical interests, and all those high-speed railways and connections like Belgrade–Budapest. None of that comes without a political price tag. The only difference is that Chinese influence is generally softer compared to Russian influence, which is brutal and direct.

So, there are many issues we will have to face. The day after, we will have to wake up and realize that we haven’t reached the end of anything, but perhaps only the very beginning—and even that beginning is already burdened by many of the currents we’ve seen within the student movement. How will the people representing it resolve all those questions? Who knows.

You sound quite fatalistic…

I am actually a complete fatalist; politically I am not optimistic at all, and I think everything has gone to hell and will never return from there. But I think today, perhaps unlike some earlier generations, we still have the privilege of being active creators of the worlds we live in, at least in part. Paradoxically, I am not a pessimist either. Perhaps the only bright spot is the realization that we still have the right and the duty toward our own micro-worlds—our families, friends, and the people with whom we share our daily lives.

That is something worth paying attention to and nurturing with love. In this abnormal reality we live in, you can still build your intimate circle, surround yourself with people you love and who love you back, and find people with whom you can share what matters to you. And that makes life easier. Looking back, I am glad to be here. I don’t think my existence was a mistake. Despite all the fatalism, I somehow still think life is OK and worth living.

Interviewed by: Gea Vlahović

Source: tportal

Photography: Marko Uzelac